Motherboard Driving Me to Wit's end, Please Help!

[Scionix]

Ok, so this week hasn't been my greatest week.

My story starts with me transferring my rig to a new case. Everything whirs up nicely, but I hang up on the boot screen. Find out it's just my RAM being loose, so I finally get past the boot screen, only to realize my Hard Drive has somehow failed (even checked it in another PC), so I have to go get a new one. Bring my new hard drive home, and I hang up at the boot screen again. After figuring out it's not my RAM, I find out having my keyboard plugged in was hanging the computer on boot screen (what the heck?). I try to boot again with the keyboard in, and everything goes swell, except now my keyboard won't regester. This is a freaking annoying problem, seeing as how I have to press f1 to boot up fully (stupid screen warning my my last boot up failed, *sigh*).

So then I spend four days ordering a PS 2 converter for my USB keyboard to get things to work, and then I find out that even this doesn't work. So now I'm pretty much pulling my hair out. I have no earthly idea what the problem could be. Plus the fact that it's a measly f1 keeping me from getting things going is infuriating.

Well, at least my football team won opening day in a big way (Roll Tide, Clemson got stomped). Any help would be fantastic. (If you want to help me yet are a Clemson fan, my apologies). My Mobo is an ASUS M2N SLI Deluxe.


Sorry for the walls of text :/

 

[brinks]

Try clearing your cmos, or somehow get your hands on a keyboard that uses ps 2, not one that is converted.

 

[Baez]

Yeah just get a new keyboard to start off with. Sounds like an odd problem but keyboards can screw up as well. They have chips too!

 

[Scionix]

I guess I can always clear CMOS for the heck of it, though I don't know how that would work

And as for the keyboard, that would require another five or so days of ordering a keyboard that uses ps 2 (tried going to local circuit cities, no go, I'd have to get one off of Newegg).

I don't see why the keyboard would mess up, it was working fine beforehand :/

Thanks for the input guys, any other suggestions?

Oh wow..........

It really was the keyboard. I put in another one I found and it worked fine.

But then my hopes were crushed.

My hard drive failed to boot again, same message as the old one, and I was 99% sure the old one was dead because it failed to work in another computer. The new one also fails to work in another computer. I have a warranty on it, but it seems more likely there is something wrong on my end....

So close, yet so far away.........



Ok, sorry for the triple post, but I think I'm on to something.

When I switched cases, I replaced my molex connected DVD drive with a SATA DVD drive because the molex one seemed to not be recieving power correctly. I had this cable attatched to the Mobo with the label "HDD Drive" that was attatched to the old DVD drive. That cable isn't attatched to anything anymore (I remember asking if it had to be plugged in earlier, I was told no), but I think this is what's messing with mah boot ups.

It all kind of fits.

Is there a BIOS option dealing with this? Some way to get around having that cable plugged in?

It's the big 'ole wide one that comes attatched to the Mobo.

Oh jebus, I feel terrible for doing this, but quadruple post ;(

I've stumbled upon something. I put my old DVD drive back in (somehow got power this time -_-), put the HDD cable on, then put the RAID cable on my hard drive (wasn't on before switching cases), and then I got past boot into a screen asking me if I wanted to start normally, safe mode, etc. So I pick normally, I actually got into windows (!!), put in my login password, but then I'm told I need to activate windows (pretty sure I already did, but I could be wrong). I pick "activate online", but then I get an error (says security error). So then I try to put CDROM boot priority to first to try and boot from my vista CD, but I can't get that to work, it just goes back to the "do you want to boot in safe mode" screen. The white dash just blinks, like it's waiting for that "press any key to boot from CD" message, but it just blinks for awhile then goes to that screen.

If I removed the HDD cable, the hard drive failed to boot. If I switched from the old HD to the new HD, the HD would fail to boot. When I switched back from the new HD to the old HD, it would fail to boot until I switched the RAID cable to a different slot on the motherboard. If I disconnected the RAID cable the HD would fail to boot.

I have a feeling this is a BIOS option thing that happened when I cleared CMOS for the first time, but loading defaults didn't help and I've done that before resetting CMOS and everything worked fine (had to load defaults in BIOS because of an Overclocking lock up problem).

Now I just need someone smarter than me to tell me what all this means

 

[KSoD]

Have you gone into your BIOS to check for any RAID options? Have you messed with it and turned them off? Or on? Since you cleared your CMOS all your settings were put back to defualt which means any adjustments made have to be redone.